nil satis nisi optimum

recommended streams

Colophon, 2017

Individual posts are edited in Markdown
format, using the MacDown editor on a
Macintosh. They
are translated to HTML via a shell script that does some
reformatting and vets the output using Tidy. Images are edited,
when necessary, using Acorn and NetPBM. Autodesk Graphic is used for
vector graphics.

Most of the not-quite dynamic sidebar content is
produced by really small Python scripts running from cron,
generating tiny HTML fragments that are transcluded into the pages
at rendertime. This allows the flexibility of dynamic page
generation with the benefits of static performance. More discussion
of this technique
here.

Tue, 20 Mar 2012

Tue, 29 Nov 2011

Mon, 04 Oct 2010

Autumn in My Front Yard

I was walking back from the corner gas station and saw a pretty amusing sight. The trees are dropping acorns right now, which means this is pretty much Christmas, the Fourth of July and Guy Fawkes’ Day all in one if you happen to be a member of the Sciuridae family.

I heard some chittering and looked up at one of the trees in the front yard. There were two squirrels walking around a long branch, each holding an acorn pod. They were arranging the pods along the branch. It was unspeakably cute.

Being squirrels, of course, they freaked and ran when they saw me, but I was able to run in the house and grab my camera.

Sun, 04 Jan 2009

Wed, 31 Dec 2008

Hunting Street Creatures

We cooked and ate Christmas Eve
dinner at our friend Don's house, then stayed over for the
following day. Don and I tossed extra bread and peanuts on the
porch and down by the sidewalk, then sat at the front window and
watched all of the hungry creatures stop by.

Being the selfish person I am, I brought along a telephoto lens.

(click through the image for a large, readable
version.)

The cat hung around all day, hoping to get lucky. I don't think
he ever did.

Wed, 08 Oct 2008

Almost certainly the last week for Tammie’s flowers. They
were planted from a big box of seeds very late in the season but I
think they turned out pretty well. Not really apparent from the
angle is how tall they are. The pink and yellow ones in the left
half of the frame are nearly two feet tall.

Sun, 16 Jan 2005

Explanation: Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy
NGC
1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the
constellation
Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope
composite view of the gorgeous island universe was released at
this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society as one of
the
largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy. NGC 1300
spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals
striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic
spiral arms. In fact, on close
inspection the nucleus of this classic barred
spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral
structure about 3,000 light-years across. Unlike other spiral
galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is not presently
known to have a massive
central black hole.

Sun, 22 Aug 2004

Soon after orbital insertion, Cassini returned its best look yet
at the heavily cratered moon Mimas (398 kilometers, 247 miles
across). The enormous crater at the top of this image, named
Herschel, is about 130 kilometers (80 miles) wide and 10 kilometers
(6 miles) deep. (link)

Sat, 20 Dec 2003

Sun, 09 Nov 2003

Full Lunar Eclipse

We had a really good view of last night's eclipse. It was a completely cloudless night, cold as hell, and manageable light pollution. At twilight (between 5 and 5:30 or so), the moon was low to the horizon, orange, and huge. As the sky darkened, the moon rose higher above the horizon. A slight shadow started to creep from the bottom left of the moon's disc, peeking just over the edge. It was fascinating to watch. The edge of the shadow was very sharp and easy to see. Over the next 2 hours, it made slow yet steady progress, until at about 8PM, when the moon was perfectly shadowed. Pretty.